The Four P's of Marketing

You're listening to Podiatry Marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald. Welcome back to Podiatry Marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald. Joined as always by my trusty co host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, what's shaking today?

Hey, big Jim. Not a lot of shaking. I went actually went to a musical last week. Went to a musical, Grease musical, and there was a bit of shaking going on on that. And it was first first high school musical I've been to, which was terrible.

Usually, I go to high school musical yeah. When there's a musical in a high school, I quite enjoy them, I think. Always impressed with the talent and all that. So they were doing Grease, and I said this one, other than the singing and the acting, it was really good.

You know, teenagers. Right? You know, that there's kind of disparate amounts of talent and yeah. It sounds like you you caught a bad one, but what are you gonna do?

Yeah. Well, it's it's only a small skill, and you can only draw on the talent pool that you have. But there's a really important lesson there, I think, even for podiatrists or any business. You you know, if you got a business, you got a team there, you can only draw upon the talent that you actually have. So if you have someone who's not an expert surgeon in a particular area, can't do nail surgery, then you're not gonna offer that service.

So I think this high school musical, their director should have realized, what's our talent pool? Let's not do a musical. Maybe we should do something else for a change. Or if you know you're that bad, is take a spin on it and have a bit of a laugh. Actually, add a few things in there to make it humorous so people realize we're not actually trying to seriously be good.

But anyway, that was just my spin on it. However, in the end, like I said to somebody, as long as those kids had a good time and they walk away from it and just go, I'm so glad we did it. Pretty much, that's all that really matters. Doesn't matter what I think of it as long as they had a good time.

Yeah. For sure. They're just life is a a work in progress. Right? So maybe they'll they'll they'll they'll they'll try again next time.

And like you said, maybe they'll tailor towards the strengths of the student.

Life is a cabaret, but obviously not on this particular night.

Yeah. There'll be days like that.

Oh, yes. Mama always said there'd be days like that.

But getting back to podiatry.

Oh, yeah. That's alright. Forgot about that. We're actually got a podiatry marketing podcast, don't we? Today's topic is the four p's of marketing.

What are those four p's? I'm

Okay. The four p's. I'm gonna I'm gonna run through what the four p's are, and then we'll dig into them in a in a little bit more detail. So we have product, which is also your service. We have price.

We have place, which is your location. And then we also have promotion, what type of marketing that you're gonna be doing. So that they are the four p's. And I've got it written down here that it was e Jerome McCarthy in 1960 came up with the four p's and a book that he had called basic marketing, a managerial approach. Now that's actually, like, doesn't sound exactly right, does it?

Basic marketing, a managerial approach. Management and marketing in the same title just seems odd.

Yeah. It's like combining your HR and your marketing departments together seems like not the best combination of resources. But, you know, I guess if you're small and scrappy, maybe that person will do two things, kind of an odd title. I guess it's 1960, so it is a 63 year old book.

So Yeah. That's it. So you think of that title probably in 1960, there weren't a lot of marketing books around like there are today. So management marketing, they probably I mean, they thought it was the same thing. But the four p's of marketing still have stood the test of time since he first mentioned it in 1960.

And the thing with the four p's, you can look we're gonna look at them individually, and you can use them individually, which every business should, but you can also combine them, which I'll talk about at the end on why you should be looking at the four p's more of a combination than just looking at them separately.

Awesome. Sounds good.

Okay. First one, product or whatever your particular service is. So This is something where podiatrists have to ask us, what is it that you're actually selling in your podiatry business? Because podiatry is the service that you provide, an orthotic is just a product. And that's why I think it's product and service.

The two of them actually go together. So what is it that you like doing more of in podiatry, and is that something that you you're specializing in, and that's something that you wanna really promote and tell the the general public about. Or you're gonna be more generalized. Are you gonna just cover all aspects of podiatry? And that's what you're you're eventually going to promote to your local community.

No. That makes sense. Like like I talked about in the past, niching niching down or kinda like putting out the message you want your local community to know, like who you are and what you do. And obviously, you know, products and services, whether it be orthotics or, the creation of an orthotic or, you know, what are those things that you wanna offer to people and kind of incorporate into your practice?

Yeah, so you might love diabetic assessments. It might just be the thing that floats your boat. You could do them all day. You love high risk feet. So that's a service you're offering is treatment for the diabetic foot.

So that service is technically your product in in this part of the the pee. So what you wanna do is I I think it's a good idea to get a a piece of paper and write down all the things that you can actually do as a podiatrist, and then circle the ones that are things that if you got a if you had a if if you wake up in the morning, you had to be at work, they said you got 20 patients booked in today, and this is what you're actually gonna be seeing, what what are the things that come to mind that you'd really love to be doing throughout the day? Now if you wanna see 20 different types of patients with 20 different problems, then that's what you need to be telling people. I couldn't do that. I would rather have my brain more focused on just specific areas.

But think about that. Whatever the service is or the product, whatever it is that you like doing the most is the thing that should be top of mind, and that should be the thing that when the general public is looking at your podiatry business, that is in the forefront. And this comes back then. We've said it how many times. Whatever it is you love doing in podiatry, don't keep it a secret.

If it was illegal, is there enough evidence to convict you that that's what you like doing?

Yeah. I I I love that. You know, some of my favorite examples, and not enough people take that to heart. And, you know, even looking at some web pages recently or some websites recently with clinics, it's still very general. Know, and there's nothing wrong with being a generalist, but I definitely recommend if you want to see more of a certain type of patient, you take Tyson's advice to heart because there's no way to, better way to differentiate yourself and really highlight the services you wanna do by making it visible to patients.

Yeah. So the the second p is price. What is it that you're going to be charging for your different services? There was Jonathan Small, who podiatrist in The UK. He's been in my other podcast 10 times.

We've done workshops together. And but we we were doing a thing online once we had a group of people online, a group of podiatrists online. And on a whiteboard, he sort of had this scale. He said, what I want you to do is and on one end of the scale, it has cheap, and the other end of the scale, it had expensive. He said, I want you to write down it was all anonymous, so no one knew who was doing it.

We all made up fake names. I think I was big dog or something like that. And you had to write down what your initial consultation was for a general patient or for your initial for initial yeah. You had to write down what your fee was for an initial consultation, and and we narrowed it down to being just a general consultation. So you had to write down on the board what your fee was and then whether you were closer to the cheaper scale or to the more expensive scale.

And what was really interesting, one of the people wrote, say, for example, $75, but they put it more towards the expensive scale. Another person had written $95, but they had actually put it further towards the cheaper scale. So there were $20 more yet on the the scale that we had done. They'd actually put themselves closer to cheaper than expensive, and the other person had done the exact opposite. So here they are charging different fees, but one thinks they're charging too much, and one thinks they're not charging enough, but there was a $20 difference between them in reverse of what was actually happening.

Yeah. We each have kind of a different perception of who we are, what our practice is, and what we're charging. So I think it it is helpful to kind of talk with others and and share information to kind of figure those things out.

Yeah. And it could be anything. Yeah. You might have, yeah, like a gold pen. How much are you prepared to pay for that gold pen?

Now I might say, oh, that yeah. It's a hundred dollar pen, and somebody else might come and say, oh, no. That's a $20 pen. So it's it it it really it's it's your thinking. It's your experiences in your career so far all make a have a big impact.

And there's somebody a friend of mine said to me once said, someone has got to be the most expensive, so why not make it you? And it's a simple thing. We used to do that when I first started in Cairns when and once there were a few more podiatrists running around, every now and then, we'd we'd ring around just to find out what everyone was charging, and our goal was to always make sure we were the most expensive. If everybody else put their fees up or somebody jumped up a certain amount in a particular area, have to beat it. I wanna be the most expensive.

And we would have patients say ask a price about something. We'd tell them, they go, oh, wow. That's about $40 more than the podiatrist down the road. And I go, well, if we if they're charging 85 and we charge a hundred and 25, we must be doing something completely different. And they went, definitely.

I said, so we do like a morning or afternoon appointment. They said, oh, afternoon appointment would be great.

I've definitely seen that in some of the clinics I've worked with, and and that's some of ones I've I've observed. Definitely, you know, there's certain kind of, I would say, like, trust signals. You know, sometimes you have some of this, the podiatrist for an NFL team or an NBA team. The fact that they are treating those professional athletes, they don't necessarily have to charge more if they don't want to, but it definitely gives them a bit of a license to really kind of to to raise the race to what I think is a reasonable amount, but, know, depending on how they're taking care of the patient. But, you know, whenever you see that so and so, you know, doctor so and so is treating the, I don't know, like Phoenix Suns or the Portland Trailblazers, it led to a certain amount of credibility.

And, you know, obviously, you only have a certain amount of time in each day to see patients. By, you know, charging a little bit more for that great care you provide, you know, you can really focus and provide sometimes even better care because you're willing to, with a little bit more of a fee, you can spend more time and have a more personalized visit that's gonna really satisfy the patients as opposed to, you know, charging low prices and running like, you know, back and forth between 30 different patients during a day and not really providing great service.

Yeah. And it's like you said, it's when you if you're seeing certain teams or you're seeing certain patients that are a higher profile and people know that, they would know that Michael Jordan doesn't go to see just anybody when he has a foot problem. If if George Clooney had a foot problem, he's not gonna go just anywhere. He's going to go to someone who has has built up a bit of a reputation for themselves. So when you're in that position, you've gotta make sure that you are charging more than everybody else.

Whether you're better than them or not is not the point. It's a perception of being better because you charge more. I was talking to someone only this morning, and we were talking about they're putting together this online course. And they I said, how much are you gonna charge it out at? And when they told me, I said, oh.

I said, is it any good? And they went, yeah. Yeah. It's really good. And I said, why are you only charging that?

I said, as soon as she told me that fee, just went, oh, it doesn't sound like it's a very good course. I got them to almost triple it, and they went, oh, do you reckon I could charge that? I said, now I would buy it. Because straight away, instead of charging 200, make it 600. Something that's worth $600 that's a course that's gonna make me a better podiatrist has far more credibility than a course that's 200.

Yeah. Definitely, there's this kind of correlation between like, value and what people think is quality with with the with the amount of price. Right? So if it's, like, super cheap, it's super expensive, people are gonna think it's cheap, and it's not really worth the time. It's like we try to give away something for free.

Yeah. People don't really care about it. But if it's it has a price and it seems something valuable to those folks, then they're more likely to go ahead and spend a little bit more for

Well, have you ever been given a free t shirt? You've been in an event or conference, and especially podcasting conference, we get so many t shirts. And you and Jim, you and I need to go to a podcasting conference one day. You you'll love it. Anyway What is this?

We go to this podcasting conference, and my wife said, whatever you do, do not come home with any more t shirts. You've got, like, 200 t shirts in your room. I said, yeah. I won't. I promise.

Anyway, 10 t shirts later. But what's really funny, some of those shirts, when I'm out there smoking meat, I'll put on one of those t shirts on right there. And if it gets a bit of stuff on it, I don't care. It was a free t shirt. Now I've got a couple of other free t shirts, which are just, I mean, super cool shirts that I'd never wear smoking because I try to look after them.

But if I went and paid $50 for a t shirt, there is no way I'm putting that shirt anywhere near my smoker because it holds value of $50, not a free T shirt. So podiatrists need to understand, when you're giving out your services too cheaply, people don't value the service. If you're making it a lot more, then they will actually value that. To a point, like, when we're talking about that online course, I said to said to them, if you're gonna charge $2,000, then you'd wanna have some street cred before anyone's gonna part with $2. So they said you can have the course too cheap, no credibility, just right, or too expensive.

So you gotta be like

You gotta find the sweet spot. Right?

Goldilocks. The Goldilocks principle. So basically, trying to be the cheapest is just to race to the bottom. I was listening to a guy talk once, and he was a marketing expert. And he said he was working with a client, and the client was in a small town, had a hairdressing salon, and he said a guy across the road also set up another hairdressing salon or barber shop and put a sign up that said $15 haircuts.

He's like, how am I supposed to compete with that? He's charging $15. He said, ah. So they sat down, and they put a big sign up. We fix $15 haircuts.

So it's yeah. Trying to be the cheapest is really just a race to the bottom. You're the cheapest, so the next person wants to be the cheapest, and then somebody else wants to be the cheapest. And the only people that win in the end and you see this, like, in beer companies and shoe companies. The only people that win in the end is the consumer.

So, yeah, it's great that your patients win, but in the end, every podiatry business needs to make a profit. So it's it's really important to understand what all your expenses are and make sure you're charging enough that you walk away with a good profit at the end of the week, that you feel good about yourself, you can provide for your family, put a roof over the head, you can educate your children, and you can teach them the value of money and and try and get out of that that cycle of, like, a scarcity mentality.

That's all for that.

Okay. Next p is place or location. I'm when he came up with the four p's, it was just place, but we're throwing in location now as well. And this is where you gotta look at where your business is. One, yeah, is it easy to find?

I think it's really important for a business to be easy to find, and it's also really good if there can be particular landmarks around it. Yeah. Like, easy parking is also great, but sort of landmarks where, yeah, oh, we're on like, where my old clinic was. We're on Mulgrave Road, which is the main road going through Cairns, opposite Stockland Shopping Centre, post office end. If you're looking for a clinic, it was really easy to say Mulgrave Road.

Yep. Main Road. Elville Shopping Centre, main shopping centre, Post Office Inn. I know which end that is. Look across the road.

There we are. Nice and easy to find. So it's really good if you're easy to find and there's prominent landmarks to sort of point things out. But other things like, are are you gonna have street front or you're gonna be on the Second, Third, Fourth Floor of a building? Are you gonna be on a main road or you're gonna be like an offshoot to a main road?

Are you gonna be in a mall or you're gonna be down a dark little arcade next to the tattoo shop and body piercing? That's always a good look.

At least there, they would have some autoclaves you could probably use for some of your instrumentation if you, you know, if yours broke down. You know? I mean, that's that's the, I guess, the positive side of that.

Yeah. There could be a I I have seen that. I have gone down an arcade once, and there was nipple busters, whatever they're called, piercings, tattoo parlor, and there was this podiatry clinic dead smack in the middle of it, and it did not look promising. It had beige walls and worn carpet and stained seats. I'm gonna I'm just going, that is such a great representation of our profession.

So, anyway, I could go on for ages. The the fourth p is oh, just going back to a place or a location. Just if if you happen to be in a location right now that isn't the best, yeah, you may have gone into a a in a little shopping mall and you thought it was gonna be good, but the parking hasn't worked out, is I always think if you're going to look for a new location, look much earlier than you think. Is don't wait until it's six months before your lease ends, before you actually start looking somewhere else. It's look.

If you got a five year lease, two years out, start looking because sometimes it takes a long time to find exactly what you want. And if, financially, your business has been going great, consider buying the next place. That was the best thing we ever did was buying the building that we eventually moved into because once I sold the business, we still own the building. So you're still getting the the rents from it. And that can just be a longer process to to basically sort through.

So just start a little earlier. I one of the mistakes I made one of many mistakes I made in my

You made mistakes?

Just a few. One of my mistakes, mate so I learned this from example from experience. Six months left in our lease, and I said to the landlord, and we'd been there for ten years, I'm not renewing. So I burnt my bridge, and we went looking. I couldn't find anything.

No matter how hard I looked, I could not find a location. So, anyway, with my tail between my legs, I went back and saw him and said, oh, you didn't really take what I said serious, did you? I was just kidding around, and he didn't didn't see the funny side of it. He said, I'll give you twelve months. I'll give you a twelve months extension, but if you have not resigned for another five years in that twelve months, I'm booting you out.

And I said, not a problem. I will find something. So I beat my chest. Thank god we found we found something about 40 meters, 60 feet down the road from where we were, so it worked out in the end. Okay.

Four stories, Jim.

What's number number four? Number four. What's number four?

Number four is promotion or pretty much your marketing. So back in the day when he wrote his book about management marketing, he he just put it all together as promotion. And these days, you're looking at online promotion or offline promotion. Your online is your website. I mentioned that really early on.

There's some dodgy looking podiatry websites out there that you look through them and you just go, you need to catch up with what everybody else is doing. In addition, on on, you've got all your social media channels, because you can't do them all. You can't you can be on every platform, and I think you should own the name of your business on every platform, but you can't I I don't think you have the mental capabilities of being really good on every single platform. This is more your wheelhouse, Jim. What do you reckon?

No. I totally agree. I think especially when you're getting started, you know, getting your your name of your clinic on all those platforms is really important because it's an easy kinda link back to your website. But at the same time, like you said, if you're trying to do seven or eight different social media channels and start it all up at once, maybe you or someone in your staff can, like, kinda get on that hamster wheel and kind of ride it out for a month or two. But at some point, it's just not sustainable unless, you know, you're high have someone full time doing it.

But you wanna start with one channel and then be really, really good on that channel, whether it's LinkedIn or Facebook or, you know, if we're making TikTok dances. Like, I know you like to make TikTok dances, Tyson. So, you know, pick out one of those exactly.

We're gonna do we should do one on here one day, Jim. Let's just

I don't think anybody wants to see that

from me. Maybe from you, but

not from me. But I think it is important to like focus on that first one and really get good with it. You know, Instagram can be a good way. You know, like you mentioned earlier, you know, if you're seen as kind of the expert in your area or you have, you know, famous people or there there's there's things you wanna highlight in a real genuine authentic way, you know, a few TikTok, you know, a few Instagrams or a a post or two on Facebook each week could be a good way of getting started. But you definitely don't want to, you know, bite off more than you can chew and really try to commit to like too many channels and just do them all poorly.

And then, like I said, burn out after two months, and then it looks kinda silly having posts from, you know, five years ago be your most recent post on some of these channels. Yeah.

I was fine. I get a chuckle out of that. But also, if you're going to use a company to help you with your social media who's not Jim, why? You would. I don't know.

You go to Jim first. But I've seen some of these big companies, and I can tell podiatrists that are using big companies to do all the social media posts because they are boring. They are just boring. There's these just generic posts going, oh, do you have this problem? And go, no one has that problem.

So why are you posting it? But then you'll look at other podiatrists and you know they must be using the same company because it's the same information that's being posted. It's dull. It's irrelevant. And the only three likes on there are the business owner, the receptionist, and the business owner's mom.

And that's and that's all the the all the river is. And then when you even have a look at the followers that are there, there's a 87 people that follow their page. But the clinic's been around ten years. So the business isn't putting any effort at all into trying to grow their social media page, but they're paying a company to just go and put ridiculous posts in there, which no one's seeing anyway.

For sure.

So and then this also applies to offline marketing. There's so many different things that you can do offline, but I think one of the biggest things when it comes to promoting is just really connecting with your community every opportunity you can get. And that is the difference between the podiatrist that runs and owns their business to some of these clinics that are run by that are being taken over by corporate companies. Like, I sold mine to a corporate. You can really see the difference between when I was in there managing it and owning it compared to how they run it now where it's just a faceless corporate entity that's running it.

And they really don't they don't care what's happening in the community.

Yeah. It's unfortunate when that kinda happens. Right? Like, it's just you get a bunch of employees that don't necessarily have ownership in the business, and they're there to kinda work their nine to five. And, you know, maybe they'll do something occasionally in the community.

But when it's your business and, you're someone that really wants to grow it and be known for a certain aspect of the care you provide, there are all these offline ways to become known, provide value to not only the community, but also to your fellow healthcare providers in your local area. And it's just one of those things that can kinda snowball over a period of time, but you have to really buy in and it is you know, small businesses, including podiatry clinics are hard work.

Oh, yeah.

And you gotta and you gotta build that network of people and put it put in the time.

Yeah. So I think when it comes to promotion, there's three parts to it. You've got you've got online, you've got offline, and the third one that I like to mention, which I don't think I've mentioned this to you before, Jim, is I call it in line. Inline. And to me

Inline's it's Yeah.

Yeah. The inline part is really it it's in line or it's aligned, basically, with your branding. Whatever it is the brand is that you whatever it is you're trying to build up about your business, whether you're using whether your promotion is offline or online, is just making sure it is aligned with your particular business and and everything that you're actually doing, which leads me to the big question at the end, and I said this is how he mentioned in his in his book that you can look at these individuals, which I think everyone should spend the time, look at each of the four p's individually, but when it in the end, when you're combining them, there's a big question you can ask yourself. Where are your ideal patients looking? Where are you going to market your particular business for the podiatry services or the product that you're going to offer?

And once you know who you're gonna market to, are they prepared to pay your price? Because that's a really important thing. People might say, I want this particular patient who does this, and they go, that's great. I want more athletes. I want more people who are in triathlons.

Okay. But can they afford to pay your services? If they can't, then maybe you need a different type of patient.

No. I think that's kind of like we talked about niching down your practice. Right? If you're living in Kansas and you want to treat skiers, you know, Kansas, just so you know, Tyson's a very flat, like, farmland state. There's really no mountains in Kansas whatsoever.

That's with Dorothy. So if

you're trying to, you know exactly. There's no place like home. But if you're trying to be like the expert skier podiatrist or work make a lot of ski orthotics, probably like Topeka, Kansas is not gonna be the spot for you. So, you know, like you talked about, you gotta find know what you know know the patients you wanna treat. Make sure you're loc you know, you have that location.

And then, like you said, are they prepared to pay? So some of those those factors that kind of triumvirate or, I guess, the the the the kind of the rectangle of of of of peas is, like, in alignment. Otherwise, it may not work out.

Yeah. And I and I really think it's just like I said, look at them individually, but remember, whenever you're going to do anything, you're really combining those four peas to just help help your podiatry business. So that is it, Jim, with me for this week for the four p's. I hope everyone pays attention to at least one of those p's today. And, yeah, I'll look forward to talking again next week.

Sounds good, thanks.

See you later.

Bye now. Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McAnnold. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.